The present invention relates to a multifunctional telephone capable of memorizing alphabetical characters and telephone numbers related to personal and company names, and more particularly, to input and display means.
Conventionally, there are a variety of multifunctional electronic telephone units capable of inputting alphabetical characters and digital telephone numbers for into a memory, which are typically provided with individual keys called "full keys" that deal with alphabetical characters and other codes plus numerals to allow input of each character and numerals by pressing corresponding keys, or being provided with character keys for allocating plural characters, for example, "ABC" or "DEF" for each character key and a designation key for optionally selecting corresponding characters so that any desired characters or numerals can be input by jointly operating the character keys and the designation key. In addition, a number of these electronic telephone units use display means that randomly display characters and numerals in a row. However, to securely arrange the full key system on a small unit like a telephone, the area to be occupied by individual keys should be minimized, and then this will incur much inconvenience to the user when pressing these keys. Conversely, if the size of individual keys were enlarged to provide the user with an easier key operation, the entire area to be occupied by the full key system must also be enlarged, thus eventually causing the total size of a telephone unit to become larger, resulting in higher cost. In particular, when a character key deals with plural characters or numerals, each key must be pressed more than twice for inputting each character before all the needed characters are entered. This requires a number of key operations to allow entry of each designated character and causes much inconvenience on the part of the user due to complex key input operations.